Saturday, April 7, 2012

Scouting Wayne Manor

I’m making a book trailer for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman. We’ve shot for a day and have the next (hopefully last) shoot date on the calendar. For that, I needed to try my hand at location scouting. For that shoot, we need a distinctive background.

We need Wayne Manor.

For those of you not wearing a Two-Face T-shirt or not awaiting your order of the complete series of Birds of Prey on DVD, allow me to explain:

Wayne Manor is the home of Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne is the secret identity of Batman.

I gave myself an hour to find my mansion. I ended up with at least five candidates:

But I didn’t know who lived at any of those addresses. So I did a reverse-address search, found names (though still didn’t know if they were current), and sent letters to each asking if my crew and me (read: my friend and me) could shoot outside their front gate for about 15 minutes one evening at dusk.

For some reason I cannot see the 2nd photo, but I felt the 3rd photo was closest to Wayne Manor. By the way, the Bill Finger episode of Batman is on the Me-Tv channel right now. If I had known ahead of time I would have let you know. It's the Clock King episode and it was cool to see his name in the credits. I announced out loud "that's the guy who didn't get credit for Batman". By the way, you can't see the TV Wayne Manor from the street. There is a wall, and the trees block it if you stand on something. The only time they opened it to the public was for some art festival. They still use it for studio filming though. I can't wait to see what cliffhanger Finger will use, in about 10 minutes.

* Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman got multiple starred reviews and made the front page of USA Today.* Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman led to a TED talk; was covered by NPR's All Things Considered, Today Show, New York Times, Forbes; made best-of-the-year lists at USA Today, Washington Post, MTV.

Upcoming books:

* Thirty Minutes Over Oregon (nonfiction picture book about the unprecedented accomplishment of a Japanese WWII pilot)* The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra (fiction picture book)* TBA 1* TBA 2

The Boys

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

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3/13/15 Virginia State Reading Association, Richmond, VA

3/20/15 school visit, Charlottesville, VA

3/21/15 Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville, VA

3/30/15 school visits, Brentwood and Spring Hill, TN

3/31/15 school visit, Hermitage, TN

4/13/15 school visits/Howard County Young Authors' Contest Ceremony, Elkridge, MD

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